{credit}Jan Golinski/UNFCCC{/credit}

The UN climate talks at Doha reportedly saved 248 trees thanks to being held at a largely (though often irritatingly) paperless conference. But did it bring us any closer to saving humanity from a sizzling planet?

Not particularly, is the short answer.

Then again, this was not an especially ambitious conference, and to the extent that its stated goals were modest, the Qatari government and the UN should face no major challenge in heralding those two long weeks of negotiations as a “success.”

After all, an eight year second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol – which was about to go all but extinct at the end of this year – was agreed to. A pathway was even set out for developed countries to compensate poorer nations affected by loss and damage due to climate change.

Moreover, countries that are taking on further commitments under the Kyoto Protocol countries agreed to review their emissions reduction targets at the latest by 2014, putting a clear moral obligation on them to make more ambitious pledges.

A more specific timetable for adopting a universal climate agreement by 2015 was also agreed to.

On the other hand, perhaps the conference’s main issue of contention – climate finance – had an outcome that is vague at best.

According to the Copenhagen Accord agreed to in 2009, developed countries are to start raising US$100 billion per year starting 2020 to help poorer nations curb their own emissions and to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Developed countries are supposed to reach the US$100 billion target by gradually increasing on the US$30 billion supposedly raised each year from 2010-2012. But this conference has failed to show just how this US$30 billion figure will increase (if at all) over the coming eight years so that it might reach its 2020 target.

This lack of specific figures leading up to 2020 makes it virtually impossible for developing countries to try to formulate a clear budget for a climate action plan.

The Climate Action Network, a global network of over 700 NGOs, expressed its take on the conclusions regarding finance as: “An extraordinarily weak outcome on climate finance which fails to put any money on the table or to ensure a pathway to the US$100 billion a year by 2020 target.”

Plenty of disappointment was also directed at Qatar and its neighbours, who are among the highest carbon emitters per capita, yet who failed to make any pledge to reduce their emissions.

Qatar, despite growing pressure and expectations – and after deporting two activists for unfurling a banner at the conference that read “Qatar, why host and not lead?” – only revealed plans to establish a climate change research institute.

A sense of partaking in history buoyed many of the hundreds of activists that marched in Doha this morning to call on Arab governments and the world at large to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change: after all, this was the very first march of its kind in politically-wary Qatar.

The World Wide Fund for Nature was one of the many organisations that joined the march.

“It took us six months of negotiations to get the Qatari government to agree to it,” says Ali Fakhry, a media campaigner with IndyAct and one of the organizers of the march. Banners demanding investments in renewables and for Arabs to take the lead were raised along with chants like: “Arabs, Arabs, action now!” and “Our future, our planet!”

Activists were gathered and ready to set out along Doha’s Corniche by 9 am, marching by the city’s bay for around an hour. Why so early? “That was part of the deal,” says Fakhry, who emphasized the government’s initial resistance to the march.

But Khalid Al-Mohannadi, the co-founder of Doha Oasis, one of the NGOs that helped organize the march, suggested during a press conference yesterday at Qatar’s National Convention Center — where the COP18 is currently taking place — that the government had no qualms about the march, as freedom of expression was guaranteed. The assertion later raised a few dubious mutterings, as it came one day after a Qatari poet had been sentenced to life in prison for allegedly insulting Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

Ultimately, the march itself did not feel in any way too constrained — though a handful of burly tracksuit-wearing interior ministry enforcers were trying to fit in with the crowd despite their conspicuous earpieces.

Qatar is expected to import some 1 million migrant workers to build the infrastructure required to host the World Cup in 2022

A couple of the banners at the march interestingly shifted away from the central climate change message (see photo to the left). There were even two women holding between them a large rainbow-coloured scarf alongside posters calling for gender justice.

As to the march’s end goal: “We are hoping that this can push Qatar to make ambitious pledges to reduce its emissions by 2020,” says Fakhry. “If Qatar takes that step, it will encourage other countries in the region to also do so.”

As yet, it remains too early to tell what will come out of this COP. While expectations are thoroughly curbed, the outcomes aren’t likely to become clearer till later this week when high-level delegates and heads of states make their way to Doha for the UN’s ongoing climate change conference.

{credit}© sallie_shatz/Flickr{/credit}

For nearly 18 years now, governments have been meeting annually to attempt to sort out the pesky little problem of rising temperatures that most scientists believe may eventually destroy civilization. This year, the eighteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) is being held in Qatar — a tiny Middle Eastern country with the largest carbon footprint per capita.

This factoid has already raised a few eyebrows about holding the conference at Doha’s airport-like convention center — though it did not faze Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, the COP’s president and Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister, when he was confronted with it at a press conference yesterday. “We should not concentrate on the per capita figures,” he concluded.

Christiana Figueres, the UNFCCC’s executive secretary, noted at the same press conference that COP18 is “as important a COP as any before.” Nevertheless there is a strong sense here that this is more so a transitional climate change conference rather than a future policy setting one.

This is most notably due to the fact that the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period expires at the end of this year, making the focus and primary objective of this COP to help establish the transition from a first commitment phase to a second one.

Without doing so, while the Kyoto protocol will legally still be in force, it will be reduced to an empty shell that can do little to curb emissions. For one thing, it was never ratified by the US, contains no obligations for developing and emerging economy countries (hence why it remains popular with China and India), and has generally been abandoned by other governments over the years.

The second objective at this year’s COP is to make headway on reaching what’s termed a universal legal agreement on combating climate change by 2020 — an agreement that should be well worked out and agreed upon by 2015. Just how universal and effective such an agreement can be — not to mention what it would entail precisely — remains to be seen.

Lastly, finding ways to speed up financial and technical support for developing countries will be of central importance. One of the “goals” established at the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 was to raise US$100 billion each year by 2020 to help developing countries cut carbon emissions. Little progress to date has been made towards realising that objective. Translating this goal into an executable, concrete plan, is one of the things COP18 can hope to help achieve.